Professionalism: The Silent Killer of Team Culture

Productivity, progress, and success are put on the back-burner when you prioritize decorum, etiquette, and propriety

👋🏻 HI, I’M BRI, AND I’M A MAXIMALIST. 👋🏻

Shocking, I know. And if this does shock you, we need to hang out more. ✨🌈

Maximalism is in my DNA, y’all. She’s coursing through my veins (there’s probably more glitter than plasma in there).

My closet? A riot of prints, colors, and sequins.

My apartment? Imagine a team of five-year-olds were given full creative control. Woe is my husband.

My office? Same energy — tchotchkes! Doodads! Neon explosions galore!

And here’s the kicker:

I’ve broken almost every unwritten rule of “professionalism” and still been a high-performer and a kick-ass leader.

Which is why, with all the love in my heart, I roll my eyes (so hard they nearly leave orbit) when I see yet another LinkedIn think-piece about workplace manners, or overhear a coworker tattling to HR about a dress code “incident,” or someone clutching their pearls over emojis in emails.

Friends, we are regulating ourselves into oblivion.

MOST WORKPLACE RULES AREN’T THE PROBLEM

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a (complete) rebel. I’ve read a lot of employee handbooks, and most rules are fine. Reasonable, even. Mostly. 😈

(Though dress codes? Yikes. Don’t get me started. That rant deserves its own post, and one day I will unleash it like Godzilla in sequins and a rainbow wig.)

The real problem?

The unofficial rules — the ones enforced not by policy, but by personal preference masquerading as propriety.

You know the ones:

• The belief that using “lol” or an emoji in Teams is childish.

• The belief that email recipients must be sorted by job title or you’re disrespectful.

• The belief that doodling during meetings is rude.

• The belief that saying “irregardless,” “ain’t,” or “axe a question” signals incompetence rather than dialect, humanity, or literally anything else.

This is where professionalism slides from “helpful guideline” into “cultural straightjacket.”

Because when you look like a good worker — polished, proper, pristine — surely that means you are one. Right?

Nope!

INTEGRITY AND GOOD OPTICS ARE NOT THE SAME THING

I’ve worked with plenty of people who dress the part, glide around with perfect etiquette, and consider this evidence of greatness.

But they weren’t motivating.

They weren’t innovating.

They weren’t even being pleasantly human.

They complained.

They nitpicked.

They patrolled the office like corporate hall monitors who mistook “enforcing decorum” for their actual job description.

And the wildest part?

They weren’t performing.

Because maintaining optics became a full-time job — one that conveniently distracted from their actual work.

Meanwhile, the real problem was staring us in the face:

Good optics can camouflage the absence of integrity.

Oddball Leaders don’t play that game.

Oddball Leaders will look odd before they look performative.

Oddball Leaders trade propriety for presence. Always.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU AS AN ODDBALL LEADER

If you want to lead through belonging, gratitude, curiosity, and joy — the core principles of Oddball Leadership — you have to loosen the vice grip of prescriptive professionalism.

Because prescriptive professionalism forsakes the core tenets!

• Belonging — when people feel judged before they even speak.

• Gratitude — when you reward polish instead of contribution.

• Curiosity — when people stop asking questions for fear of “sounding unprofessional” or “showing disrespect.”

• Joy — when work becomes a performance instead of a place to be human.

So here’s your mandate. Yes, I’m being prescriptive, I know, shut up:

• Let your staff show up naturally and authentically.

• Don’t get caught in the quicksand of etiquette minutiae.

• Don’t let your team drown in it either.

• Trust your people to be excellent in their work and excellent to one another.

In other words…

MIND YA BUSINESS AND LET YOUR PEOPLE DO THEIR JOBS.

And, instead, ask yourself:

What brilliance might bloom if we stopped policing professionalism and started to cultivate belonging?

Photo by Steph Wilson on Unsplash